Casting Stones
by Cathan White
Summary: From the last chapter of Lord of the Flies- A very different point of view


This ended up being a lot longer than I intended, but first off, sorry for the long note, secondly, I haven't read this book in a very long time, even though I did really love it, so if anything I put in here is inaccurate, I greatly apologize and would really appreciate it if someone would set me right. And finally, I have to warn; this is just a little disturbing. I'm not sure why I wrote it, but it's actually from Roger's point of view, and I'm guessing most of you who've read the book probably have about the same opinion of Roger that I do. He is one disturbed individual... so naturally; anything from his point of view has got to be a little disturbing. So yeah, I had a hard time rating this because there's no violence, no language problems, but the concepts themselves are rather twisted.  
Still and all, I'd love to know what you think!! Reviews and reviewers are worshipped and loved forever and always!!  
Thanks.  
Cathan  
  
Disclaimer: These characters, the events don't belong to me and weren't written by me. This is only my interpretation of the point of view of one of the characters.  
  
CASTING STONES  
  
  
He would live.  
For some reason, with everything waiting before me, with everything that stood before me, facing me, that was the thought that struck me. It was what raced through my mind and what controlled the movement of my fingers around the spear in my hand, sharp point of one of the ends pricking my thumb.  
I'd sharpened it.  
My blood slipped over my fingers from the grove on my thumb.  
He would live.  
It drove through my mind as the point of a spear.  
And I could not shake it loose.  
I stood on the edge, back, I had fallen behind in the hunt, but I had not been concerned. They could not complete it without me... No, not without *me*, even with Jack and all his claims of leadership... It had always made me want to smile. Let him lead. Let him think he had control, of us, of it.  
He stood tall to cast my shadow, and it was because of him that I was safe.  
It was because of him I felt no breath of fear as I raised my gaze to meet the badges gracing the officer's chest, weighing down and rippling the fabric of his uniform.  
His uniform.  
It struck me from the blood call of the hunt.  
He was there for us.  
My teeth bit hard into each other until my temples throbbed. And because of those badges, those firearms at his side, Ralph would live.  
My spear was nothing.  
I caressed the point between my fingers.  
The officers were here, they had found us.  
At last...  
Was I glad?  
I wasn't sure.  
There was something there, something deep, something locked within that told me I was to be glad that these men had come. I was to be glad that they would take us away, that they would 'rescue' us.  
Save us.  
But no, my understanding was too great. I knew things now... and I knew there to be no rescue and nothing awaiting us on the ship aboard...  
The only thing they had to save us from was the one thing from which no one was ever safe.  
The one thing Simon had understood.  
Simon, Simon, of all, it was you who figured it out.  
Somehow I feel I should have admired him for that.  
Admire...  
It was seething there with gladness.  
Should have been.  
Was not.  
There was nothing to admire.  
I had watched, I had stood back and watched as he stumbled from the trees.  
It had been his error.  
I had stood in shadows licked by the fires embers, chants lifted from lips that hardly seemed my own... and I had watched.  
I knew.  
With each stone I cast it came closer.  
I came closer.  
Simon's knowledge was my own.  
I knew it as I watched him die, as I stood long after, as I watched him pulled out to sea by a tide of teary water.  
I had not raised my spear, even as my voice had joined the others... I hadn't needed to raise my spear, for it was that knowledge that stained my hands.  
My final stone hit home.  
It started with the rocks...  
Always with the rocks.  
'Ye who casts the first stone...'  
I'd heard that somewhere once.  
A justification.  
This war, this raging war... it was a justification, though it was always the other to cast the first stone.  
Perhaps that is why I had started with stones.  
Cast the first...  
And another...  
Ever creeping closer to that target, ever creeping closer to that freedom, to that hell...  
I hadn't hit the little boy.  
I hadn't need to. To come so close, to hear no one scream my name, or his, to come so close to striking home and have no one, *no one* stop me... the excitement had risen within me, risen until my breath was short and limbs weak...  
It was all I needed.  
As I watched from the shadows Simon's falling...  
It was all I needed.  
I understood.  
And it was all I needed.  
That understanding, that final breath of knowledge to close the distance between stone and mark, to shed that final skin clinging from the world in which we'd all been taught, all been raised. The world of hypocrites and irony. Playing war...  
That's what the man said before us. This soldier coming to our 'aid'.  
Were we playing war?  
And what was it that he played at with that firearm upon his side...  
Playing...  
There was no game within the mystery of the beast.  
For it was he who gave me the final strength to press my weight down on the lever and send the boulder flying home.  
A stone...  
It had been so easy, so strangely, surprisingly easy. I had leaned forward and it had rolled. I had thought there would be something... something left. Something that would tell me the path was not clear, that would keep me from sending it down a path to connect, as each pebble on the beach had not been thrown to the target. I had thought there would be something. Something of admiration, something of gladness... something...  
But no.  
It was empty.  
What it was I had been expecting had left me long before. It had slipped out to see in the moonlight, slipped out with Simon into the depths of the ocean in the moonlight.  
I was free.  
And yet Ralph would live.  
The fire...  
It had been our mistake.  
I watched as he sank to the sand. Watched and remembered.  
So close to feeling his blood on his hand... and now I watched the saline dried tears slip over his mud caked cheeks, hair in his eyes, as my hair fell in mine...  
Around me, they fell. Their tears, their despairs...  
They cried.  
They fell and they cried...  
Fresh blood spilled from the palm of my hand as it slid across the point of the spear.  
They would never understand.  
In a moment of blind contemplation, I took a step back, slipping further towards the forest edge that I had so unknowingly stumbled out of. The edge of everything we had learned to accept. I shrank back towards it. To be lost in its embrace once more...  
But no, like the emptiness of my weight on the lever, there was emptiness in the now smoky jungle. Emptiness in the burning destruction of what had once been our only home. Our provider.  
A land as our mother.  
There was nothing for me here, the land burnt to cinders and those around me slipping willingly back into the world of civilization.  
Of night lights and atom bombs...  
There was no need for me to retreat into my jungle... Jack as my protector, my façade, I had no need to hide but in plain sight.  
It was a horrible ordeal.  
But the blame would not find my shoulders.  
I was not chief.  
I was not in control.  
We were a lost lot of children, homeless, and scared.  
We had done what we had done, but they would not speak of it.  
For they were afraid.  
Those weeping around me, and those officers that turned their backs to us now, turned their backs on their tears, on their emotion.  
They were blind with their pistols at their sides.  
What need had I to hide in their world?  
I was one of them, with only my advantage of knowledge.  
And my ever small, yet universal difference.  
I was no longer afraid.  
No gladness, no admiration, no regret... and no fear.  
For I had finally conquered the beast.  
I had driven him back, and he could not touch me anymore.  
He could not hurt me...  
I had become him.  
  
I drove my spear into the ground, the point red with my blood as I left it there, standing in the sand... empty.  
An offering of all that I left behind.  



End file.
